[Interest] QtSVG deprecated

[Martin Holmes]

This all seems very disappointing to me. How would you actually use 
webkit to provide SVG support to QImage?

When I moved to Qt (from Delphi), I was delighted to discover that 
QImage supported SVG, because I'd been used to having to provide icon 
sets in multiple resolutions just to enable users to change toolbar 
sizes. SVG icons seemed a huge step forward, just as they do when you 
discover that your desktop icons on Linux are SVG and are scalable. Now 
it seems that the Qt team (or community, or whatever) are not interested 
in maintaining this forward-looking feature. Perhaps this is because the 
person or people who developed it are no longer involved, and no-one 
else wants to take it on; if so, I'd expect it to be classified as 
QXmlPatterns:

Overall module state: Done
New maintainer required.

However, it seems things have gone further than this. The decision to 
deprecate seems to be based on the contention that webkit can be used 
instead, but frankly I don't see how, and in any case, that's an 
enormous overhead to get simple functionality in QImage. If the 
objection is that QtSvg supports only SvgTiny, then let it by all means 
be renamed QtSvgTiny.

We're all familiar with the argument that "if you want it to be 
available, write and maintain it yourself", and of course that's a valid 
response to any complaint like this in an open source project. But if 
someone steps up to maintain it, could we expect that its status would 
be changed and the deprecation undone? Or would that person end up 
maintaining a forked library outside of the main Qt project, to avoid 
the eventual end of deprecation (removal)? If so, we'll end up with a 
situation like that of Delphi when it was most badly managed, where core 
functionality that everyone depended on (such as Unicode support or GIF 
support) was written and maintained by volunteers outside the main 
project, and no-one could rely on the long term health of some essential 
libraries. The overall effect of this was to make the Delphi project 
seem incoherent, and to force developers to retrieve and install dozens 
of extra bits and pieces before they could get productive with the IDE.

So this is all by way of saying: who does one lobby, and how does one 
lobby, to try to get this deprecated status changed?

Cheers,
Martin

On 12-01-10 04:49 AM, Jason H wrote:
> So what we need is not new code, just a new label.
> Seems easier to add a label then to re-engineer the module.
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* Thiago Macieira <thiago at kde.org>
> *To:* interest at qt-project.org
> *Sent:* Monday, January 9, 2012 10:59 PM
> *Subject:* Re: [Interest] QtSVG deprecated
>
> On Monday, 9 de January de 2012 16.47.49, Alex Malyushytskyy wrote:
>  > As somebody mentioned above svg is the great way to create scalable
> graphics
>  > which currently works an all platforms including icons (but not
>  > limited to icons).
>  >
>  > Would you advice adding webkit dependency for such purpose?
>
> Yes.
>
>  > There is a huge difference between not actively adding new futures and
>  > keeping code alive
>  > updating it if necessary,
>  >
>  > Status of "No maintained because we consider it complete" would be
>  > fine if it did not assume
>  > stopping bug fixes.
>  >
>  > As I understand "No maintained" and "Done" state should have a core
>  > difference - second assumes bug fixes and updates for new platforms if
>  > necessary.
>  >
>  > Why would not allow people to maintain it?
>
> You're welcome to do it, but if no one steps up, it will remain in
> Deprecated
> state. That includes not fixing any bugs except for crashes and data
> loss and
> not porting to new platforms.
>
> There was no "not maintained" state when we published the list back in May:
> everything is maintained by someone, even if reluctantly. There is still no
> such state.
>
> --
> Thiago Macieira - thiago (AT) macieira.info <http://macieira.info> -
> thiago (AT) kde.org <http://kde.org>
> Software Architect - Intel Open Source Technology Center
> PGP/GPG: 0x6EF45358; fingerprint:
> E067 918B B660 DBD1 105C 966C 33F5 F005 6EF4 5358
>
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